Evening Star Newspaper, December 22, 1929, Page 100

A Different Christ- mas Story From the Pen of One .of the Leaders Among Writers of Short Fiction— Another First- Run Story by Miss Hurst IWill Be a Feature of The Star’s ]lfagdzine Next Sunday. OWN around the Bowery, Christ- mas week comes in murkily. Even more so than in thé old days when there was an air of lurid festivity to this down-at-the-heel section of the greatest metropolis of the world. All that has gone now. There are no more knee-high swing- ~ine doors to invite the sordid reveler or the threadbare celebrant. All that reiains of a - picturesque yesterday are the rows of lean and . Justerless buildings which house petty shops and lunch-counter eating-places and men's hoteis, where the wayfarer may obtain a cot for 15 cents and a cruller for 5. .. Tom Mason, who had a three days’ growth of @ beard, a turned-up ccat-collar and a pulled- down cap-visor, and who walked close to the sordid buildings, as if for their sordid protection, - was one of hundreds who presented almost pre- cisely his personal appearance as Christmas week descended sootily upon the Bowery. TRY as you would, however, it was impossible *" to keep out that permeating sense of holi- day. There was tinsel-fringe already dangling - In the sooty window of a second-hand shoe store. On a level with the elevated railroad " rows of unwashed windows showed the dim out- line of holly wreaths. Up in the sleeping ward of the men’s hotel where Tom Mason was in the habit of hiring a cot for 15 cents a night, some wag had pasted a red-paper Santa Claus " against the window pane. In spite of one's self, even when one had every reason to desire to for- get or ignore, Christmas week elbowed its way ° into these murky recesses of the city. Once Tom, lurking along as he was wont to do, pausing for a while in doorways, chatting " with the dim outline of figures who joined him there and then ambling along again, picking up a window-washing or a floor-sweeping job here and there, paused before the plate-glass window of a telegraph office. The Christmas blurbs displayed there sent a laugh along Tom’s ironic slanting mouth “Wire to Mother.” “Let Mother Hear From You This Christmas.” “Wire Happiness to That P Aching, Waiting Heart Back There.” “It's Cristmas, Remember the Folks Back Home.” Sentimentally that was revolting to the sophisti- “cated mind of Tom Mason. Wire the little - mother. Send greetings back to the doting sis- . ter. Remember the forsaken—the deserted wifc, wete the phrases that slurred across Mason’s “mind; a mind not too deadened to function < ironically on occasion. Melodramatic - appeal like this, Mason rea- . scned; had its place after all. More than one " Bowery bum reading these snide reminders * might quite conceivably slink back home to * gladden some waiting heart. Sentimental ad- vertising like this was a commentary apon the sentimentality of the country. Americans were " a susceptible species, all right, easily reached by way of the most obvious emotion. i THUS Tom Mason, ambling away his furtive, . meaningless days, was apt upon occasion to * reason or meditate. But most of the time it was jusi a case of apathy with him. One had to - pass the days somehow, and one had to eat to live, so for the most part life with him consisted of working the few hours a day necessary to put food in his body and then lay that body on a cot A failure of a man if ever there was one; and a failure that had come about without any particular reason. Indeed, it was a failure that was inconceivable to those who had known him in his youth, when life had promised and even been fulfilled to the - extent of marriage with a woman of his own TP excellent social sphere, subsequent success in business and the establishment of a home and family. The decline, when it began, had beer “ relentless and consistent. Of course the element - of drink had started it. A drunken father and - a drunken husband coming home to intimidate - children and wife was not conducive to happi- - mess, neither was it to bring about success in his ‘well established business affiliations. The decline and fall of Tom Mason was the old soiled, repetitious one of appetites, the THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, DECEMBER 22, 1929, I‘istmas——By Fannte Hurst It was a third-rate sentimentality that was revolting to the sophisticated mind of Tom Mason. But cheap and melodramatic appeal like this, Mason reasoned, had its place after all—and it did with him. alienated affections of family and broken for- tunes. It had been 14 years since Tom had encoun- tered any members of that family, although from time to time he had read in the daily newspapers accounts and notices that kept him in touch with some of its doings. He knew that his three children had married out of the nest of the home he had created for them. Good, substantial marriages. He knew that the house in Briarcliff Manor that had been bought and paid for in the heyday of his well-being was still occupied by the woman who was still legally bound to him as wife. He thought of her sometimes, as he thought of everything in his -apathy, dimly and without affection. She had been a high-spirited girl, who rode a horse magnificently and who had won him with the quality of her vitality, good nature and good humor. Whatever had come subsequently they had enjoyed the brief heyday of their well-being together. Their children had come healthily and in close succession; their founding of the family had at the time seemed well worth the doing. The changes began to come when thc changes in Tom began to set in. Lurid, terribic, frightening changes. Children’ who shrank from him. A cold, hating, alienated wife Debts. Dechne. Catastrophe. Then Tom’s disappearance. It was bitter to the man who had spent 14 years slinking close to the sinister buildings of the Bowery to look back upon the horror of the decline and fall of his empire. And there was no doubt about it, sneer as he would inwardly at the second-rate appeal of the telegraph ad- vertisements, some of his apathy seemed to fail away from him at Christmastide and an ache in his heart begin to gnaw its way through. More probably than not there were white- haired mothers who would burn candlelights in windows on Christmas eve for recalcitrant sons who, instead of returning to them, would be lurking in Bowery dives on Christmas eve. Fourteen Christmases on that Bowery had brought a chonic chill to the heart of Tom Mascn. After all it was impossible, if you were human, not to recall happier Christmases. Christmas, ot all the periods of the year, empha- sizes man’s dependability upon man. TH.ERE had been happy, glowing Christmases in Tom'’s life; as a child in the home of his parents; as a father and husband in the home he had created for his wife and children. At the home in Briarcliff Manor there had been one Christmas when his three babies just for fun and excitement of it had been brought in to the laden Christmas table in an enormous wash- basket that was all decorated in holly sprigs. There had been a Christmas eve in that same big house when he and his wife had worked until past midnight decorating three individual Christmas trees for the three babies. Yes, Tom, even as the ‘others who slunk through these Bowery Christmases, had his memories. This Christmas, for some reason or another, probably because his vitality was at lowest ebb, the memories lay damper and heavier on his spirit than they had in all the 14 years. It seemed to Tom that his life was like a gray procession composed of day-by-days that were marching like gray cowled figures, one by one, to his grave. Was a loveless, luster- less life such as his worth .the living, after all? Time and time again this Christmas, as the holly wreaths began to shine dimly through the dirty windows of his district, Tom found him- self asking this sinister question. Was this cowled, gray procession of his days worth the living? = More and more frequently, as these thoughts squatted upcn him, Tom found his badly shod feet wandering down toward Brook- lyn Bridge. Countless men and women had jumped oft it for surcease from the misery of failure.. It seemed as good a way as any to avoid the one more meaningless Christmas. And yet some- how there was not in Tom the courage, or the cowardice, call it what you will, to take this way out, although all the while there was boil- ing within him the consciousness that another . final melodramatic touch. - ped it. of the Christmases similar to the 14 behind it would not be endurable. And so, in spite of his sophisticated abhor- rence of the second-rate sentimentality of the write-to-mother blurbs on the plate-glass win- dow front of the telegraph office, Tom found himself on Christmas eve standing on the porch of the house he had built for his wife and fam- ily in Briarcliff Manor. Either he had rung the bell or some one inside had opened the door to the crunching of his footsteps along the-gravel walk. The figure of his wife, smaller than he rémembered it, was standing in the doorway with a lighted candle in her hand. It smote Tom as laughable, that lighted candle. All that was needed now was the blinding snowstorm to give the picture the “Come in, Tom,” said his wife, almost in the manner of one who had been waiting an’arrival and had opened the door to greet him. On her words, the wind blew out the candle. All that Tom foolishly could find to say was, “Your candle’s gone out, Pauline.” 5 “It's all right,” she said evenly. “Come in. It was only burning for you.” (Copyright, 1929.) Hard-Boiled Santa. Continued from Tenth Page doctors.” There was a curious mixture of em- barrassment and pride about the boy then. “Well, there’s doctors in Mexico Oity and hospitals—good ones. Don't you worry, Buddy, I'm goin’ to he’p you, like your dad would he'p you if he had the chance.” “Before I'd take he’p from a skunk like him I'd rot!” said the boy. o ’ Jensen smiled. “Guess it's jest as well you and your old”man never met up, Buddy,” he said. “But you're goin’ to Mexico jest the same.” The boy was thoughtful. He was considering " the proposition. “When do you reckon them officers will be ba‘k for m2?" he asked. “Expectin’ 'em any time now,” said Jensen. “Then there ain’t noe use tryin’ to get me across to Mexico,” said the boy. “There wouldn't be time to go up to the Panhandle and get the girl. And I won't go without her. Takes a man like my father to do a thing like that!” “No, you ain't like him,” said Jensen. “But there’ll be time. all right. There’s a way, Leave it to me, Buddy. I'll see you get plenty of time. You saddle that pinto pony of mine and get goin.’ I'll fix it. I've always liked you, Buddy. Shake” The boy put his hand into Jensen's and grip- You sure are kind,” he said. “I ain't forgotten how you give me the booze the day I rode Tornado. The girl's the best friend I got. I reckon, but you're next.” “WELL." said Jensen the next night when the sheriff returned, “still lookin' for Tom Runyon?” The officers’ faces were stern “Yes, and quit your foolin’. We got proof that a man by that name’'s beer here .on this here ranch for a month” ; “Longer'n that,” said Jensen. “Tom Runyon is my name and I've been workin' here hest part of five years now when I ain't been boot- leggin’. That good-lookin’-kid stuff don’t fit me, but the name sure is mine. Reckon I'm your man.” .. They lcoked at each other. Something damn funny about this! “Well,” said one of the rey- enue officers grimly: “It's a cinch we ain't goin" back to headquarters without no prisoner at all. You'll nave to come along with us, seein’ you're Tom Runyon and the warrant’s sworn out in that name. You bootleggers up to all kinds of dodges.. Guess there’s another Tom - Runyon that we'll have to get later. But you'll %o for now. Sheriff, got your bracelets?” So Hardboiled Jensen rode away, rode away calling “So-long™ to the astonished outfit. He couldn’t wave goodby to them on account of the handcuffs. Rode away smiling. By the time they'd find out their mistake the boy and the girl he married would be safe in Mexico But he was in for it. They’'d find out how he’d fooled them and it would go hard with him when they tried him for that old crime. Robbing the mails. That's what they'd Say he'd done. And he wouldn't be able to prove he hadn't. For he’d have to stand trial now. He'd given himself up. And willinglyt Funny how just finding out you had a kid of your own by a woman you'd loved—a game kid, too—made it easy to do things like this. (Copyright, 1929.) U. S. Market for Porta Rico, PORTC RICO has found business in the United States is good, a revie.' of the past 20 years-indicates. From 1910 to 1914, the agri- cultural exports to the United States averaged $37,000,000. This figure was increased to $62,- 500,000 during the succeeding five years, and for the past 10 years it has been $91,000,000. _ Sugar and tobacco, of course, made up the greater part of the expogted products. -